Carrying water: Ozarka makes a splash by moving all bottling in-house

In the bottled water industry, the product’s clarity is important. Ozarka Water CEO Steve Raupe has invested in his Oklahoma City-based company to help customers clearly see where the water is bottled and sourced.

Raupe purchased a multimillion-dollar, 5,000-square-foot production line to fill, cap, label and package single-serve 16.9- and 12-ounce bottles. The machine can produce 360 bottles per minute. The addition means Ozarka’s entire inventory, ranging from 12-ounce bottles for retail to 5-gallon bottles for home and office service, will be bottled in-house.

Ozarka had previously outsourced the bottling of the 16.9-ounce and 12-ounce bottles’ production to another company, Connecticut-based Nestle Waters North America. Adding the equipment to bring the work back home created the need for four more employees, bringing the company’s total employee count to 100.